30.1.04

Iron Age Europe exposes, more clearly than perhaps any other field of archaeological inquiry, to what degree modern interpretations of ancient gender are the products of our modern-day constructs of the male and female. A simple example is the distress caused archaeologists by the inclusion of drinking vessels in apparently female burials. In 1934, Jacobsthal was horrified at the suggestion that the Kleinaspergle burial might be female, thus exposing the ancient women of Swabia as lushes the equals of their Etruscan counterparts. It is in the same tone of horror that young scholars and excavators react today when asked about the possibility that a burial containing weapons might be female. Since the mere presence of weapons has led to the statistical resexing of anthropologically female skeletons as male, we should not be surprised by the attitude toward gender revealed in the preliminary publications of the ongoing Glauberg excavation.

Christine presenting her manuscript to King Charles VI of France. DetaildetailIlluminated ManuscriptsBritish Library

Christine de Pizan

Her father was the court astrologer to Charles V. An astrologer at that time being a far different profession than today, more proto-scientist than con-artist, as viewed and as practiced.

"Charles V's library was if not the best, then one of the best, in Europe. Such a position would explain her father's reputation, Christine's access to books, Christine's knowledge of both the printing trade and the best craftsmen in the trade, and Christine's entree into the circles of the rich and powerful..."

Married at fifteen, by her own account most happily, she was widowed at 25. Her husband had encouraged her to continue the education begun at court by her father. She may have been the best-educated woman in Europe at that time.
To support herself and her three children she began to write. Considered the first woman to do so, she was a professional author for the rest of her life, highly successful and renowned throughout literate Europe, such as it was, in the early 15th century.

"Christine was a champion of her own sex. In her Dit de la rose (1402) she describes an order of the rose, the members of which bind themselves by vow to defend the honour of women."

For his part, Serbedzija embraces a friend who was a member of the government that drove him from his homeland.

"I believe that everyone is a good person," Serbedzija says warmly. "We have to help those who were killing and find a way to come to their hearts. I think that's the mission, not just for artists, it's the mission for everybody."